Recently, technology such as subscription services in which arbitrary users can use personal terminals to download and/or audibly reproduce tracks among predetermined content during a contract period by paying a given contract fee, is becoming widespread.
Concerning information utilization limited to a given period, proposals have been made to allow a user to execute a given program provided the user maintains a connection contract with a given network provider (see, e.g., Patent Document 1 below).
Specifically, the proposal described in Patent Document 1 is of a configuration in which a license key that expires after a short period is set with respect to software distributed to an information terminal of a user and the license of the software is updated by connecting to a network provider.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-265584